Saturday, January 24, 2009

Mat Sinner & crew are back with Sinner's sixteenth studio release, Crash and Burn, which was released in the US by Candlelight Records a few week back.

For anyone not familiar with Sinner, the band plays melodic, guitar-driven 70's hard-rock. The closest points of comparison would be pre-disco 70's Kiss and Thin Lizzy. Bassist/vocalist Mat Sinner has a throaty rasp similar to Gene Simmons and the dual-lead guitars of Henny Wolter and Christof Leim give the band's music a pre-NWOBHM sound. The Thin Lizzy comparisons are strengthened by the band covering Lizzy's "Baby Please Don't Go" on their 2007 studio album Mask of Sanity and contributing a cover of "The Sun Goes Down" to a Phil Lynott tribute album. The song "Connection" (which is streaming on the band's MySpace profile) perfectly captures the spirit and sound of Thin Lizzy and could easily be mistaken for a Thin Lizzy cover or outtake.

Take a look at the video for the song "Revolution" and this will give you a good sense for the grittier, hard-rock side of the band.

Some of the strongest cuts from this disc are "Crash and Burn", "Heart of Darkness" and "Connection". All three of these cuts are streaming on Mat Sinner's MySpace profile.

Sinner is likely to be temporarily inactive as bassist/vocalist Mat and guitarist Henny are also in Primal Fear and the band is in the process of mixing and mastering their forthcoming disc 16.6.

All-in-all, Crash & Burn is a strong hard-rock album that should catch the ear of fans of 70's/early 80's rock. It would be nice to see the band do a US tour sometime in the near future.